The party claimed to have raised 506.5 million drams ($1.25 million) for its election campaign from about a thousand donors during a single event organized in August.
In an extensive article published last week, the investigative publication Infocom.am revealed that the bulk of that sum was generated by donations ranging from 1 million to 2.5 million drams, the maximum amount of such contributions allowed by Armenian law. It said that their nominal donors included presumably non-rich people linked to senior government officials and businesspeople as well as ordinary residents of Yerevan who could hardly afford such payments.
When contacted by Infocom reporters, many of those residents claimed to be unaware of the hefty sums wired to Pashinian’s party on their behalf through a commercial bank owned by Khachatur Sukiasian, a wealthy businessman and pro-government lawmaker.
“Their living conditions make us think that they could hardly afford donating 2.5 million drams ($6,200) to the party,” Lucy Manvelian, the main author of the article, told RFE/RL’s Armenian.
There are similar doubts even in the case of other, more affluent donors. They include five former officials from the Armenian Ministry of Emergencies. The 2.5 million drams donated by each of them is a sum comparable to their annual salaries.
Armen Pambukhchian, a senior Civil Contract figure, headed the ministry until last July. He then managed the ruling party’s Yerevan election campaign.
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian greets supporters during an election campaign rally in Yerevan, September 15, 2023.
Other such donors work for companies belonging to businessmen thought to be on good terms with Armenia’s current leadership. Among them are eight senior executives of Yeremian Projects, a company that owns dozens of restaurants as well as several dairy farms. They too gave Civil Contract 2.5 million drams each. The company told Infocom that it has nothing to do with those donations.
“Our sources told us that the company’s money, not the personal money of those individuals, was donated,” said Manvelian.
Pashinian was asked about the alleged campaign finance irregularities during his government’s question-and-answer session in the parliament on Wednesday. He declined to explain the donations deemed suspicious by the investigative journalists while denying any lack of financial transparency within his party.
“Did the investigative reporters obtain that from intelligence services?” the premier said. “It’s a report based on information taken from the official websites of Armenian state bodies. Can transparency be any different from that?”
In fact, none of the websites cited by Pashinian contains any information about campaign donations to his party. Civil Contract for months refused to release the list of its donors requested by journalists and civic groups. The ruling party agreed to do so only after the Yerevan-based Center for the Freedom of Information took it to court in December.